In his bold figurative paintings, Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga explores the intersections of colonialism, tradition, and globalization in his home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He dresses his subjects in traditional Mangbetu garments and replaces their skin with circuit boards—a reference to the coltan (a metallic ore) exported from the DRC for use in modern devices around the world. Ilunga has exhibited in Paris, London, Madrid, New York, and his native Kinshasa. Today, his work belongs in the permanent collections of Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town and the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, and regularly sells for five figures on the secondary market. As he renders both the beauty of traditional Congolese culture and symbols of historical and contemporary trade and exploitation, Ilunga captures the dissonance within his society.

Source: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/eddy-kamuanga-ilunga-oubliez-le-passe-et-vous-perdez-les-deux-yeux

What I See

Global technology could not exist without Black, African blood. Well, it could, conceivably. But, the most economies, companies, and individual “entrepreneurs” in the world cannot imagine what their loss would be without the grease of Black blood and Black bodies to lubricate their profit machines.

But, I am wrong for calling the mechanisms that loot bodies, blood, opportunity, and every other form of wealth from Black people and Black lands. These are “our” machines, our designs, our investments in the grinding poverty of our human family located in an ancestral African lands. So when I view this piece I see it as a grating reminder of my complicity in the robbery of a land and a people I am so eager to celebrate. The laptop I am typing on, the phone that is playing the tunes that are adding thump to my thoughts as I type, both contain the minerals and ore that are the real life circuitry that the artist here portrays in his work. Human circuitry. People power in the most real sense.

What do you see?

– Chad Kifalme